Comment is free: John Ozimek: A victory for the terrorists

Website censorship erodes the very freedoms that the home secretary purports to defend.

John Ozimek, guardian.co.uk, Sunday November 02 2008 20.00 GMT

The UK has a very real problem with websites that incite terrorism, and if we are not careful the government’s preferred cure could be as bad as the disease itself. Faced with the impossibility of policing material that originates from abroad, the home secretary is now planning to appoint herself the UK’s first official censor.

In 2006, the government passed a law banning the display of material that “directly or indirectly” encouraged terrorism.